The restaurant industry has heretofore been highly labor intensive. To provide service to its patrons, sit-down types of restaurants have required personnel such as a host (or hostess) to seat the patrons and attend to their general needs, a waiter/waitress to take the patron's menu selection and communicate that selection to the kitchen and to deliver the prepared selection to the table, a cashier to receive payment for the food and service and bus boys and other personnel to assist the waiter in clean-up. The fast-food industry is also labor intensive. In a typical example, a cashier takes the patron's order, rings it up in the cash register, fills the order (or when the order cannot be immediately filled, communicates the order to the kitchen) and receives cash payment for the foods and drinks provided. This process is inefficient since the establishment must be staffed with sufficient cashiers and cooks to properly fill the orders. In those fast-food restaurants having a drive-through system where the patron drives past a menu board and verbally makes his/her selection, additional personnel by the way of a drive-through attendant or attendants are required. Aside from the inefficient utilization of personnel, obvious staffing problems cause occasional and sometimes frequent overstaffing or understaffing. The inefficient utilization of personnel causes a major concern in this establishment over pay-roll expenses.
While improvements in cooking and in the cost of production of the ingredients have increased, the efficiency (and profit) witnessed by restaurants, the labor costs have not witnessed like improvements.
A related problem with fast-food establishments is that the transaction is in most, if not all instances, in cash. This is particularly true in drive-through systems. It is believed that profit margins, the average order cost or other factors have caused these establishments to shun credit transactions.
Attempts have been made to increase the efficiency of restaurants and decrease the labor costs. For example, in Kurland et al, U.S. Pat. No. 4,553,222, an interactive system is set forth for a restaurant wherein the patrons enter their menu selections at each table via a monitor, which displays the menu by suitable input means. The menu selections are displayed at the kitchen and the cocktail selections are displayed at the bar. Entertainment may also be provided at the monitor. A central processing unit (the CPU) controls the menu selection and entertainment functions and, if desired, can print a composite bill which would then be delivered to the patron's table. No means are provided for identifying a particular patron account and automatically debiting the account while generating a credit voucher slip for authorization by the patron.